The illustrative embodiments generally relate to methods and apparatuses for vehicle speed data gathering and reporting.
We live in a world of hurry. With countless demands on our time, people are constantly rushing about to get from appointment to appointment. If someone has fifteen minutes to travel fifteen miles, they will often attempt to average a vehicle speed of sixty miles an hour over that distance. This, quite naturally, can present a problem, if the legal speed limit is somewhat less than sixty miles per hour.
Or, it may be the case that a good deal of the journey is made on an interstate, where speeds can permissibly exceed sixty miles an hour, but in the transition from interstate to surface road the person may inadequately decelerate the vehicle, and travel at a legally excessive speed for some portion of the transition. Never is this untenable position made more clearly existent than when the dreaded flashing lights of a police vehicle are seen in the rearview mirror.
Almost everyone has been in the position of being stopped for speeding at one point or another. Further, since in many of those cases, the driver has absolutely no idea at what exact point the police officer tagged them with a radar gun, the driver is left with little response when asked the question “do you know how fast you were going?”
But roads are crowded arteries, and it is possible that the police officer tracked the speed of a vehicle next to or nearby the driver. Further, it is simply possible that the police officer's equipment was inaccurate. Finally, some techniques for measuring speed are imprecise, such as a guess based on a visual observation or a guess based on the present speed of a traveling police vehicle.
Unfortunately for the driver, even if the police officer was mistaken in an assessment of speed, or simply tracked the wrong vehicle, the driver typically has little to no evidence to fall back on.
Speed data may be useful for other purposes as well. If a driver knows typically how fast the driver is traveling between two points, an assessment can be made as to whether or not a destination can be achieved within a certain timeframe. Additionally, many young drivers have a tendency to drive at excessive speeds, which, especially when combined with a lack of experience at driving, may lead to dangerous conditions. Parents have an interest in knowing at what speeds their children are traveling in family vehicles or when newly driving.
In another instance, if an accident occurs, both parties will often accuse the other parties of violating one or more traffic regulations, in an effort to show their own innocence in the matter. In situations such as this, unless there are believable witnesses, justice is forced to rely on a decision based on observations that are likely inaccurate and almost certainly self-serving.